Our first day of school was bittersweet around here, as I discovered after the kids got on the bus that our faithful dog Callie had died.
It wasn't unexpected--she had been unable to use her right leg for at least 6 weeks--but it is still hard to say goodbye to a family dog, especially a good one.
We had been without a dog for a few months in 2007 when I saw a poster in the Cresbard Post Office for puppies. I knew it had been hanging there awhile, and doubted there were any puppies left. I took the poster home anyway, called the number, and they did in fact have one left. I loaded up the boys and we headed down to a farm near Polo to get our dog. (We surprised David with her when he got home that night. Since she was basically free, I knew he wouldn't mind.) :)
Landen and I decided Callie would be a good name, since it was close to "collie," which she mostly was.
She was about 4 months old and only looked like a puppy for probably a few days after we got her, but the farm kids who had been caring for her had already trained her not to chase cars and do other puppy things. The first time I heard a semi drive by and she didn't run to chase it, I knew we had a keeper.
This was my favorite memory from the day we brought her to our farm:
And so she was our friend through the girls being born and all of the adventures since then. Since Nathan was only 1 year old when we got her, he was especially close to Callie. I took this picture of him in 2011.
We know she was "just" a dog, but she was our dog and she was a good dog.
We will have more dogs.
But we will never have another Callie.
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